[mythtv-users] Testing the HDTV Waters

[Calvin Harrigan]

matt mead wrote:

>Calvin Harrigan wrote:
>  
>
>>I've been using Mythtv with SD for years now.  I've decided to try HD, 
>>there are quite a few OTA HD channels available in the area.  I browsed 
>>through the list looking for minimum configurations needed to play back 
>>HD.  The specs seemed a bit high.  My current setup is an Athlon XP 1800 
>>with a FX5200 video card, 512 Megs ram. 360 gigs storage.  According to 
>>what I've read, what I have is not powerful enough.  But being stubborn 
>>I downloaded a couple HD clips.  One in mpeg and one in wmv format,1080i 
>>and 720p respectively.  Suprisingly enough both clips played 
>>flawlessly.  I was blown away by what I've been missing with HD.  The 
>>concern is that I played the clips using the mplayer from within 
>>mythtv.  Is the mythtv built in player able to play HD as efficiently?  
>>The native format of the tv it's connected to is 1280 x 720 via 
>>dvi->hdmi.  So the 1080i was scaled.  Does anyone else have a similar 
>>low end setup that is using hd successfully?  Is an 1800 just too slow?  
>>Any comments appreciated.
>>    
>>
>
>First off, are you talking CPU model or CPU Mhz?  I was capable of playing 720p 
>perfectly on an Ahtlon XP @1733Mhz, 512M ram, and an FX5200, using mythtv.  For 
>1080i playback, mplayer would do it fine, but I would get the occasional glitch 
>in mythtv when the CPU was asked to do something else.  CPU usage tended to be 
>around 85-90% for playing of 1080i using bob deinterlacing.  The important 
>thing to note is that I was using XvMC.  This was all with mythtv .18.1, and 
>XvMC worked fine with the 7xxx nvidia driver I was using at the time.  That 
>said, I'm now running on the .19-fixes branch on much faster hardware (Athlon 
>64), and having to do software-only decoding with xv scaling.  For the life of 
>me, regardless of nvidia driver version, I cannot get XvMC going with my nvidia 
>6200.  With software decoding, I cannot get the CPU usage consistently below 
>92-95% with bob deinterlacing, though kernel and linear blend result in 50-65% 
>CPU usage for 1080i.
>
>I'd say give it a shot.  I wonder if anyone has a script to "import" a file as 
>a mythtv recorded program.  If you can find something like this, grab a real 
>mpeg2 stream and try it out:
>http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/LotRclip2-mpg.torrent
>
>This is a Lord of the Rings clip the EFF hosts a torrent for so you can 
>determine if your computer can handle it.  WMV really isn't going to tell you 
>much in terms of whether your computer will properly handle MPEG2 at those 
>resolutions and bitrates.
>
>I personally think if you're talking 1800Mhz, you have a strong chance of 
>getting HDTV to playback adequately, assuming you can use XvMC.  I wouldn't 
>expect the frontend to do much else, though, as it will likely cause stuttering 
>when it does.
>
>
>-matt
>
>  
>
1800 XP  is the CPU model, I think the actual speed is 1533 or so.  I am 
not sure if mplayer was using the xvmc capabilities of the card or not.  
I do not use xvmc in mythtv because it causes some strange behavior with 
the on screen display.  this is with 0.18.1.  I'm downloading the 
torrent you linked to above I'll see how that works.